On June 29 the City Council stopped a housing vote, said the question of whether Councilmember Chelsea Byers may legally participate in housing decisions was serious enough to send to the state, and promised to wait for the answer. The answer never came. The waiting stopped anyway.
UPDATE August 31 at 1:30 PM: Previously asked about the missed FPPC deadline, City Attorney Lauren Langer confirmed to Brian Holt at WEHOonline that the Commission still has not answered, adding that she “cannot say when a response will be provided” but that when guidance arrives, “I trust that it will be publicly available.” She was then asked to explain the delay, whether Commission staff requested additional information or granted an extension, either of which would lawfully restart the clock.
Langer did not answer and offered no legal reason for declining.
If the unstated reason is attorney-client privilege, it is a poor fit. California Evidence Code section 952 protects only communications made in a way that discloses them to no third persons, and the City deliberately sent these facts to a state agency on July 13.
A letter coming back from that agency is not a lawyer advising a client. And the privilege in these matters belongs to the City Council as a body, not to the city attorney and not to the councilmember under review, which means the Council can direct disclosure itself, by motion, in public, at any meeting. Langer’s own answer concedes the point: if the destination of this process is a public document, the route to it is not a secret.
So did the FPPC ever reply to Langer and if so, what further information was requested, was this information provided, and when was it provided?
Original story continues below.
Byers keeps voting
Three weeks after that vote, on July 20, the Council adopted Resolution No. 26-056, setting the 2026-27 rent limits and income requirements for West Hollywood’s Inclusionary Housing Program.
It went through on the Consent Calendar. Motion by Councilmember Erickson, seconded by Councilmember Meister, approved 5-0. The minutes note “EXCLUDED CONSENT CALENDAR: None,” meaning nothing was pulled for discussion. There is no recusal in the record. No abstention. No conflict disclosure of any kind.
The City Attorney’s letter to the state asks about the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance by name. It is item five on her list.
Tonight there are two more. Item B.6, also on the Consent Calendar, asks the Council to take official City positions on Proposition 1, an $11.25 billion Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond, and Proposition 37, a Second Mortgage Homebuyer Program and Revenue Bond.
Are those covered by the pending question or not?
Drawing that line is exactly what the Council asked the state to do, and until the state does it, somebody at City Hall is deciding item by item, in private, which housing votes Byers may cast.
Residents have not been told who is making that call, or on what basis.
Where is the clock?
City Attorney Lauren Langer sent the request to the Fair Political Practices Commission on July 13. It lists nine upcoming decisions: zone text amendments, the Zoning Improvement Program, the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance update, the Housing Element. It asks whether Byers may take part in them.
Commission rules give staff 21 working days. That ran out on August 11. Today is working day 35.
No advice letter has been issued. At the August 17 Council meeting, the first after summer recess, the City Attorney said nothing about it. There has been no status report to the Council or to the public since June 29. Sixty-three days.
Why it is probably stuck
State rules require an advice request to contain “a statement of the material facts.” Langer’s twelve-page letter contains no exhibits, no attachments, no enclosures. No employment agreement. No offer letter. No correspondence from the Welcoming Neighbors Network, the advocacy organization that employs Byers. No compensation terms.
The letter says where its facts came from: “Councilmember Byers has provided information regarding her own employment,” and the office “gathered and independently verified publicly available information where possible.”
Santa Monica asked the state the same kind of question last November about Councilmember Jesse Zwick and his job at a pro-housing nonprofit. Its city attorney attached five exhibits, including the signed offer of employment and the job description. The Commission answered in seventeen working days.
Documents decide these cases.
One reason is timing. The Commission has flagged, on its own initiative, that a conflict can arise from decisions an official took part in while negotiating a job, before it formally begins. In Santa Monica the attached offer letter made that checkable: the Council acted on an emergency housing ordinance on August 12, the employer’s offer to Zwick is dated August 15, and he accepted on August 18. Residents could see the sequence and ask when the talks had started.
Byers’s employment began in November 2024. When those negotiations began is not in the West Hollywood file, because nothing documenting her employment is in Langer’s letter.
Neither is her pay structure, the other fact the Commission has relied on in cases like this.
Is Byers Cooperating? Or deleting?
The City Attorney cannot produce an employment contract or a negotiation date from public sources. Those belong to Byers and her employer. She would have to provide them.
Has she? It is a fair question given what happened in the days right after the June 29 referral. Byers’s LinkedIn job description was altered. Forty-two posts were mysteriously deleted, including a celebration of SB 79 clearing the California Senate that had drawn more than four hundred likes. Those posts were archived before they disappeared and have been published.
Is this an election delay?
Langer’s request went to the state without documents. A filing that thin invites a follow-up request for facts. A follow-up resets the twenty-one-day clock. The reset clock now runs past the day ballots are mailed. And Langer has told the Council and the public nothing for two months.
It appears that the City Attorney’s failure to do the basic work of the assignment, gathering the documents before asking the question, has pushed the answer past the election.
Whether that was intended or merely permitted, the result is identical. West Hollywood voters are being asked to fill out ballots without information their own Council voted 3-2 to obtain, about a candidate whose eligibility to vote on this city’s housing agenda is still unresolved.
Let’s ask!
Show up tonight at public comment and email Mayor John Heilman (jheilman@weho.org), Vice Mayor Danny Hang (dhang@weho.org), Councilmember Chelsea Byers (cbyers@weho.org), Councilmember John Erickson (jerickson@weho.org), Councilmember Lauren Meister (lmeister@weho.org), the full Council (council@weho.org), City Manager Jackie Rocco (citymanager@weho.org), and City Attorney Lauren Langer (lauren.langer@bbklaw.com).
The public deserves an update on this critical conflict of interest question. The City Council itself determined that the issue was serious enough to seek guidance from the FPPC. That referral cannot simply disappear into a bureaucratic black hole while Councilmember Byers continues voting on matters potentially implicated by the very conflict under review.
Residents deserve to know the status of the inquiry, whether the FPPC has requested additional information, whether the City has responded, and when an opinion can reasonably be expected. This is particularly important with an election approaching.
Transparency is not satisfied by eventually releasing an answer. It requires keeping the public informed while the process unfolds. West Hollywood talks endlessly about ethics and accountability. This is an opportunity to actually practice both.